Book Review: Lead Like an Ally

Grown Woman Book Review

Book promise:

This book promises to be an extraordinarily practical guide to both understanding and overcoming gender bias and systemic sexism in the workplace.  It promises to bring light to all the ally bases. The goal? To use experience, storytelling, and toolkits to help readers learn how to clean up the culture, stretch talent equally, establish ally networks, manage meeting behavior, promote belonging, and measure progress toward achieving inclusion milestones.

My Review:

I have been honored to be recognized as a Top 100 Minority Executive by Empower. As such, I am always looking for resources to promote inclusion and advocate for diversity.

One of the challenges is that oftentimes, diversity and inclusion are lumped together. Organizations find that it is difficult to understand the layers of commitment it takes to move from creating a strategy for diversity and truly creating a culture of inclusion.  This requires a complex, multifaceted commitment and it is difficult to get understanding and engagement.

Julie’s book focused on the gender component of diversity and uses a bold approach in demonstrating the challenges of a woman in various phases of her career to demonstrate gender bias and sexism and the various roles allies play in the process.

Along the way, Julie gives a balanced perspective on the role of allies, she provides manager toolkits at the end of every chapter and resources assessments, checklists, podcasts and books that help expand your perspective. Her brilliant approach takes something that is really complex and makes it accessible and relatable.

While learning how to clean up the culture, stretch talent, establish ally networks, manage meeting behavior, promote belonging, and measuring progress toward achieving inclusion milestones is a tall order, the book doesn’t disappoint. You will learn foundation steps to take and be inspired to do more to reach your next pivot point.